"Asteroid Bennu may be a fragment of an ancient ocean world. That's still highly speculative. But it's the best lead I have right now to explain the origin of that material," Lauretta said.

An early analysis of a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu suggests that the space rock had an unexpectedly water-rich past — and it may have even splintered off from an ancient ocean world ...

How Bennu could hit the Earth Bennu, categorized as a Near-Earth Object (NEO), could pass through a "gravitational keyhole" in the year 2182, causing it to collide with Earth, said NASA.

The return capsule containing a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is seen shortly after touching down in the desert at the Department of ...

Bennu’s parent body formed 4.5 billion years ago and once contained pockets of liquid water. As the water evaporated, brines similar to Earth’s salt flats remained.

The rocky object called Bennu is classified as a near-Earth asteroid, currently making its closest approach to Earth every six years at about 186,000 miles (299,000 km) away. It might come even ...

Specifically, it has a 1-in-2,700 chance (that’s just 0.037 percent) of hitting Earth in 2182. Bennu is just over ⅓ mile, or 560 meters, in diameter.

The asteroid Bennu is puzzling scientists, with samples from the space rock showing weirder properties than they expected. These include extremely high nitrogen levels and improbably magnetic ...

Asteroid Bennu is much stranger than researchers previously thought. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. When the OSIRIS-REx ...

Dec. 3, 2018: OSIRIS-REx arrives at asteroid Bennu. Dec. 31, 2019: OSIRIS-REx begins orbiting Bennu. Oct. 20, 2020: Sample collected from Bennu. April 7, 2021: Final flyover of Bennu.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned samples from asteroid Bennu, which showed discoveries about life and the early solar system. These findings can now provide information into the potential ...

Bennu is categorized as a near-Earth asteroid, and scientists say there is a 1-in-1,750 chance it could slam into Earth during a series of very close passes between 2175 and 2199.